Tea and Sympathy
by alyseci5
Summary: It turns out that Hatter and winter just don't mix. [Alice/Hatter] (Written for wildforce71 for fandom stocking 2013. Thanks to hiddencait for betaing duties.)


It turns out that Hatter and winter just don't mix.

"It doesn't get this cold in Wonderland," he tells her, his nose red and dripping and his eyes watering from the easterly wind. "Wet, yes – it rains for at least three months of the year, more or less constantly." And Alice can believe that. "But not this… this white stuff!"

His voice rises at the end of the sentence, his outrage clear in every line of his body as well as the tone of his voice, and Alice swallows a smile. It wouldn't do to smile – Hatter has his pride, the little of it left after Wonderland anyway, and anyway there's nothing really funny in the way that he shivers and stares out of the window, something wary and maybe even afraid in his eyes as the flakes continue to fall.

She tries to imagine it – not the never seeing snow part, because that she can believe. There are places even in her world where snow has never fallen, and people who have never seen it. But to not even have heard of snow, outside of some fairy tales for children that are make believe and – Alice believes – may even have slipped through the cracks from her world into his.

She tries to show him the wonder of it, the joy in a brisk walk in a brisker breeze, when your nose turns red and your fingers tingle and you feel alive in the crisp air. But Hatter just snuffles and sneezes, shuffling along in her wake with a long-suffering air and accusing eyes. She buys him boots and coats and hats that even he looks ridiculous in, but he just buttons the coats up to the neck and pulls the flaps of the hats down over his ears until he looks like a petulant marshmallow, if marshmallows had colds that wouldn't quit.

"We should go skating in the park," she says.

Hatter falls down so many times that eventually he crawls to the edge of the rink on his hands and knees and stays there, eyeing her like a wounded seal until she finally caves and takes him home.

"We should make snowmen," she says.

No, she's not entirely sure of the point of it, Hatter, and, no, it's not some arcane ritual that has replaced human sacrifice or commemorates some bloody battle, even if there is such a thing as a 'snowball fight'. So he swallows a sigh and obediently rolls heads and torsos for her, sticks carrots and coal into lopsided creations that somehow manage to have the same melancholy air about them as he does, at least until she takes pity on him and lets him go home.

She doesn't even suggest trying out the 'snowball fight' part of the equation just in case he really does go and find a mirror that will take him home until spring comes back and this beastly weather disappears as he's threatened more than once.

(She's not quite sure how to tell him that winter is an annual occurrence in her world.)

"Christmas!" she says a little desperately, and Hatter perks up at the idea of a time of year involving presents and eating and drinking a little too much, at least until they venture out into the city to do some shopping. By the end of the day, she's had to convince him that they do not, in fact, need to prepare for a looming catastrophe by clearing every store for miles around out of tinned goods and stock up for it the way that the rest of the world seems to be doing.

She does the rest of her Christmas shopping online that year.

It's early January before she caves with a sigh and settles Hatter in the big armchair by the television, willing to wait for the spring thaw before sending him back out into her world if it will make him happy. She doesn't have a fire, but she buys one of those DVDs that fakes it well enough for the big screen, and a box of tissues for his poor red nose, and a blanket that's big and blue and soft that she can wrap him up in.

("He's not acclimatised yet," she tells her mother, who raises an eyebrow when she sees him. "They don't have winters like this where he comes from, and… I think he's homesick."

The words sink into her, truer than she thought when she said them, and she thinks _of course_.)

He gives her a wavering smile, and blows his nose, letting out a sigh that seems to come from his very bones, and resolutely **does not** look out of the window, where the wind is still howling and the snow is still swirling, thick and fast.

 _Tea_ , she thinks and buys some of that, too, every kind she can think of: black tea and green tea, and herbal varieties that are supposed to be good for colds. She brews him Chamomile and Assam, Earl Grey and Peppermint, blends that are common and those she finds in out-of-the-way little places that she thinks would suit Hatter down to the ground.

And each time she hands Hatter a cup, he wraps his hands around it and breathes in the steam, looking, for the first time, as though he might actually thaw before winter's done.

Encouraged by this, she branches out into hot chocolate and hot toddies, warm milk and spiced mulled wine, and each time Hatter perks up a little, a bit brighter, a bit more him. When she ruffles his hair, it perks up under her fingertips, as pert as the day they met, and the smile he gives her is soft and warm, not cold and worn down by the winter's icy chill.

When she takes him skating in the park again, he holds her hands the whole way round, letting her guide him and trusting her to keep him safe. He stumbles once or twice but doesn't fall down. Afterwards she buys him hot chocolate, with whipped cream and marshmallows and chocolate sprinkles on top, and he curls up in his coat with the scarf Alice's mother bought him wrapped firmly around his neck, watching the other skaters without shivering once.

The snowmen he builds with her one Sunday are never going to conquer the world, but they stand up straighter than they did before, and beam crooked coal smiles at passers-by. And even Hatter eventually admits that his first snowball fight was fun; at least, he admits it once she's fished all of the snow out from down his back and kisses him on the nose to make up for it.

His lips are cold when they finally meet hers, and so is his nose when he pushes it into her neck, making her giggle as he pulls her closer, humming gently against her skin in the soft winter light, his arms a solid, steady weight around her.

Spring is coming, and soon the snow will melt and fade away. Alice now knows that Hatter will still be with her then, right by her side through the spring rain and the summer's heat.

And then it will be winter again, and they'll weather that, too, with tea and sympathy.

The end


End file.
